“Will you never tell me?”
“I shall make full confession when this war is finished, if you ask me.”
“What have we to do with the war?”
“You speak as a Scot. ’T is an unnecessary question, for you know all in England are entangled in its meshes.”
“But it can have nothing to do with your feeling toward me, or my adoration of you.”
“You shall judge when you hear.”
“Then let me hear now.”
“No. Your persistence, when you see how distraught I am, dims your title of gentleman. A lady should not be coerced.”
“Your censure is just; but oh, pity my despair if this obstacle be real! It cannot be real. Whatever it is it shall dissolve before my burning love as mist before the sun. Tell it to me now, that I may show you that it is the fabric of a vision.”
The girl remained silent, her impetuous lover fiercely questioning her bowed head with his eyes. But as if in the interval of stillness a spectre intervened between them and brought a startled expression into his eyes, their intensity sharpened suddenly, and he said in a low voice: “Do not tell me you are already married?”